Social Media Marketing – Over Rated and Over Hyped?

Spending time and money on social media marketing is a waste of resources for many companies. This may go against the current trend of Social Medial as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but for many small businesses this is the reality.

So what is Social Media Marketing? Wikipedia describes it as:

“the use of social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other online collaborative media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service.”

There are a number of reasons to get involved with marketing your company/website via social media. There is the potential to reach a huge audience with all the benefits that can bring, and the search engines, especially Google, like websites with social media links which can improve your website PageRank.

But it’s not for everyone. A successful social media campaign needs time and people, two commodities that many small businesses don’t have. And a half-hearted campaign can do more harm than good. A Facebook page with no entries for 3 months makes a company look worse rather than better. The same can be said for a Blog, Twitter and any other media that requires regular attention – and nearly all do.

Larger companies don’t have this problem as they can employ a specialist or designate a member of staff to run the campaign, update entries and interact with potential customers. Most smaller companies don’t have that luxury.

There is also the product or service you provide to consider. Some don’t lend themselves to social media marketing as easily as others. So if you are thinking of starting a Social Media campaign ask yourself these questions:

• Does your product or service lend itself to this kind of promotion?
• Does your target audience use social media like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter?
• Does your business have the resources to run and manage a campaign?

If the answer to any of these questions is not a positive ‘yes’ it may be better to target your marketing efforts elsewhere.